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Squilliam on 31 August 2008
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noname2200 said:
Squilliam said:

It would be foolish to compare the Wii to the HD consoles because there are too many different factors. I was thinking of just comparing the Xbox 360/PS3 of last year to the Xbox 360/PS3 of this year. I think it needs to be at least Q3 and Q4 though I can be flexible here, is that it evens out the game release calenders to give the comparison consistancy.

There are some important factors to think about IMO.

  • Did the situation for publishers get better in an overall sense the previous year?
  • How has the average sales per game changed over that time?
  • Are the sales distributed more evenly or are they even more tightly clustered amongst few titles?
  • How many titles were released last year compared to this year?
  • What is the overall sales in the shooter genre compared to last year?

We are coming to the close of Q3 so we could do a snapshot since I intend to do a half way analysis for my prediction in my signature anyway which would help to guide us through until the end of the year.

 

I see. It still makes more sense to me that include all games released in that timeperiod, rather than just those in one genre since there are just far too many variables that would impact one genre (Gears alone is going to shift millions of units for the shooters, for instance). Still if you want to go by Q3+4, I'd be more than happy to abide.

And actually, we're in fiscal Q2 for most companies. Fiscal years usually start in April, not January, hence my selecting Q3 rather than Q4 (Note though that this is not the way all companies do business, just the majority. Note the dates on the chart I provided earlier, which explains part of my skepticism that time will really improve things, since the chart was only four months out of date). Including the fourth quarter does seem wiser in retrospect, though, since more and more big games are coming out in January and February, to avoid the packing of the holidays.

I agree with the factors you listed, though, even if I want to broaden it up to all genres. Any objections?

 

If we included all genres, if would be difficult to track individual game releases. Theres no point making a test case harder than needed. We could either track all shooter releases or track only a certain number of overall game releases. In this case I would prefer accuracy over bredth. Furthermore the shooter genre is quite well defined, it is one of the easiest genres to classify games from.

Since this is Q2 how about we follow this pattern. Test and compare initial Q2 results with last year and finetune the process then the actually analysis starts once the fiscal Q3 begins (October 1) and ends at the end of Q4 and then comparisons can be made with financial reports etc.

 



Tease.